Abstract
This paper provides the experiments on semi-active control of a 3-story base-isolated structure using a magneto rheological (MR) damper. Three kinds of experiments were carried out for the following methods using the optimal control theory; (i)feedforward control method considering both time delay of MR damper and characteristics of earthquakes, (ii)feedforward control method considering characteristics of earthquakes only, and (iii)feedback control method. From the results of the experiments it was verified that MR damper could reduce acceleration and story drift responses of the structure in comparison with the case without any control. Among the adopted three control methods, the case (i) achieved the best performance.
